In the Philippines Agus Dwikarna (b.1964), a Jemaah Islamiya Terrorist Operations Facilitator, was arrested. In July he was convicted of carrying C-4 plastic explosives and bomb parts at Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport as he and two other Indonesians were leaving Manila for Bangkok. He was sentenced to a prison term of 10 to 17 years. In 2014 Dwikarna was deported back to Indonesia.
Links: Indonesia, Philippines

2003 Mar 13

Forced into a diplomatic retreat, U.S. officials said President Bush might delay a vote on his troubled United Nations resolution or even drop it, and fight Iraq without the international body's backing.
Links: Iraq, USA, BushGW

Nepal and Maoist rebels agreed to release all prisoners of war and set guidelines for peace.
Links: Nepal

2003 Mar 13

The UN Human Rights chief excoriated the US Guantanamo policy. He said the world shouldn't have territory "where no law applies."
Links: USA, UN, Gitmo

2004 Mar 13

In Afghanistan Taliban armed with rockets and heavy machine guns attacked a government office near the Afghan-Pakistan border, sparking a firefight that killed one Afghan soldier and three Taliban.
Links: Afghan

2004 Mar 13

In the first DARPA Grand Challenge robotic vehicles began a 200-mile road race near Barstow, California. The Pentagon sponsored race ended without a winner, as none of the autonomous vehicles built by the 15 qualifying teams was able to travel farther than 7 miles from the starting line.
Links: USA, California, Cars, Robot

In Tikrit, Iraq, a roadside bomb killed two American soldiers and wounded three. 3 American soldiers died in two bomb explosions in Baghdad. A 4th died from his injuries the next morning.
Links: Iraq, USA

2004 Mar 13

Israeli soldiers shot and killed two Palestinian militants in an off-limits military zone between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Links: Israel, Palestine

2004 Mar 13

In Pakistan the India cricket team beat a Pakistan team at Karachi's National Stadium in a match that came down to the final ball.
Links: India, Pakistan

2005 Mar 13

In southern Brazil a tourist-filled bus crashed into a logging truck, killing seven people and injuring at least 20.
Links: Brazil, Bus Crash

2005 Mar 13

Paul Schaefer (83), former head of a secretive German colony in southern Chile, was flown to Santiago after his arrest in Argentina. Schaefer founded Colonia Dignidad, or Dignity Colony, a commune-like enclave in 1961, and is accused in the disappearance of a dissident under dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
Links: Argentina, Chile

In Musina, South Africa, thousands of protesters held an 18-hour vigil on the border with Zimbabwe to demonstrate against mounting repression in the neighboring country two weeks before a key parliamentary election there.
Links: South Africa, Zimbabwe

2005 Mar 13

The Disney Corp. board of directors named Robert Iger to succeed Michael Eisner in October.
Links: USA

2005 Mar 13

In India at least 19 people were killed and 15 injured when a bus skidded off a mountain road into a deep gorge in Uttaranchal.
Links: India, Bus Crash

2005 Mar 13

Israel's Cabinet adopted a report on the state's complicity in setting up 105 illegal West Bank settlement outposts and decided to dismantle 24 of them.
Links: Israel, Palestine

2005 Mar 13

Kyrgyzstan held parliamentary runoff elections amid rising tension over signs the longtime leader plans to extend his rule beyond constitutional limits. President Askar Akayev (60) won an overwhelmingly loyal Parliament in runoff elections. The opposition won 6 of 75 seats and said the vote was riddled with abuses.
Links: Kyrgyzstan

TimelinesA text-based site.

2005 Mar 13

Vigilantes in Oaxaca, Mexico, killed a state police officer setting him on fire in revenge for the shooting of a taxi driver in a barroom brawl.
Links: Mexico

2005 Mar 13

Saudi police killed an alleged Islamic militant and arrested three others in a shootout at a suspected terror cell hideout in the Red Sea city of Jiddah.
Links: Saudi Arabia

2005 Mar 13

Venezuela announced that it would seize parts of 4 large estates, some 270,000 acres of farmland, after finding irregularities in their ownership status.
Links: Venezuela

2005 Mar 13

Pope John Paul II was released from the hospital and returned to his Vatican apartment overlooking St. Peter's Square.
Links: Vatican

2006 Mar 13

US Credit-card issuer Capital One Financial Corp. said it has agreed to buy North Fork Bancorp. Inc. in a stock and cash deal worth about $14.6 billion.
Links: USA, M&A

The McClatchy Co. said it has reached a deal to buy Knight Ridder Inc., the second-largest U.S. newspaper publisher, for about $4.5 billion in cash and stock. McClatchy will also assume about $2 billion in Knight Ridder's debt.
Links: USA, M&A

2006 Mar 13

A UN agency said bird flu has been found at two sites in Afghanistan and there's a high risk that tests could prove it to be the deadly H5N1 strain.
Links: Bird Flu, Afghan

2006 Mar 13

Bangladesh riot police fired tear gas in Dhaka to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing activists who tried to march in support of a general strike.
Links: Bangladesh

2006 Mar 13

Defense Secretary John Reid said Britain will cut its forces in Iraq by 10 percent, a reduction of about 800 troops, by May because Iraqi security forces are becoming more capable of handling security.
Links: Iraq, Britain

Liu Zhijun, China’s minister of railways, announced $25 billion plans to build two new high-speed train lines linking Shanghai with Beijing (1320km) and another linking Shanghai and Hangzhou (175km). Plans included the use of magnetic levitation technology that can reach speeds of 260 mph.

Iraqi officials received a report alleging that American soldiers had killed a family of 4 in the Khasir Abyad area, about 6 miles north of Mahmoudiya. Police found four hanged men dangling from electricity pylons in a Baghdad Shiite slum, hours after car bombs and mortars shells ripped through teeming market streets, killing at least 58 people and wounding more than 200. An armed group that says it was created with government backing to drive al-Qaida fighters out of a restive Iraqi province claimed that it had killed five top members of the terrorist group. 2 US soldiers assigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 28th Infantry Division, Pennsylvania Army National Guard, were killed in fighting in Anbar province.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange said shares of disgraced Japanese Internet startup Livedoor Co. will be delisted from the exchange next month over alleged securities law violations.
Links: Japan

2006 Mar 13

Leaders of Lebanon's rival factions resumed talks after a weeklong break in an attempt to agree on the biggest issues that divide the country, the fate of the pro-Syrian president and the U.N. call for Hezbollah's disarmament.
Links: Lebanon

Nepal's royal government offered amnesty, cash, jobs and land to communist rebels who surrender in the next three months.
Links: Nepal

2006 Mar 13

Peter Tomarken (63), former host of the 1980s TV game show "Press Your Luck," and his wife, Kathleen Abigail Tomarken (41), were killed along with 2 others when their small plane crashed into Santa Monica Bay, Ca.
Links: USA, Air Crash, TV

TimelinesA text-based site.

2006 Mar 13

Abdul Rahim Wardak, Afghanistan's defense minister, said the national army will be fully operational within four to five years and ready to take over more responsibility for security from international troops.
Links: Afghan

2006 Mar 13

Rana Abdel Rahim Koleilat (39), a fugitive bank executive wanted for questioning in the U.N. probe of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination, was arrested in Brazil on an unrelated charge. She offered officers up to $200,000 to release her and was arrested on a charge of attempted bribery. In 2003 Koleilat made headlines in Lebanon and Europe in connection with questions about her role in the disappearance of $300 million from the private Medina Bank where she worked. The funds' disappearance was the worst financial scandal at a Lebanese bank since the country's 1975-90 civil war.
Links: Brazil, UN, Lebanon, Corp. Scandal

2006 Mar 13

Newly inaugurated President Michelle Bachelet said that all Chileans older than 60 will immediately begin receiving free care at public hospitals.
Links: Chile, Medical

Mexico’s attorney general said he will close a special prosecutor's office dedicated to investigating atrocities committed by the government during its two-decade campaign to weed out suspected guerrillas and leftists.
Links: Mexico

In Nigeria and official report said ethnic and religious fighting, land disputes and communal conflicts have driven more than three million Nigerians from their homes since the return to democracy in 1999.
Links: Nigeria

2006 Mar 13

Jan Egeland, the UN humanitarian chief, said increasing violence has left hundreds of thousands of civilians in Sudan's Darfur region without food and facing the prospect of widespread disease and death within weeks.
Links: UN, Sudan

2006 Mar 13

Pope Benedict XVI and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak held talks at the Vatican about Iran, Iraq and the prospects for lasting peace in the Middle East.
Links: Vatican, Egypt

2006 Mar 13

The US Agriculture Dept. confirmed that a cow in Alabama had tested positive for mad cow disease. The animal had not entered the food supply for people of animals. This case of the disease, as well as one from Texas in 2005, was later reported as atypical.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force announced a merger with the Institute for Welcoming Resources, a religious group representing 1,400 Protestant organizations that unconditionally welcome gays and lesbians.
Links: Gays, Religion

The Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Black Sabboth, Blondie, Miles Davis, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Sex Pistols at a ceremony in NYC.
Links: USA, Ohio, Pop&Rock

2006 Mar 13

South Korea’s Kia Motors Corp. said it will build a $1.2 billion factory in West Point, Ga., its first in the US. Toyota said it will build a plant in Lafayette, Ind.
Links: GeorgiaUS, South Korea, Cars, Indiana

Heart researchers said clogging of arteries by plaque was reversed through aggressive use of an anticholesterol statin.
Links: USA, Medical, Pharma, Heart

2006 Mar 13

In London 6 men participated in a drug trial and soon became seriously ill. The men had been given does of TGN1412, a monoclonal antibody developed by TeGenero AG of Wuerzburg, Germany, for treatment of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases and leukemia.

A Spanish judge indicted 32 people for allegedly plotting to drive a truck packed with explosives into a courthouse that has been the hub for anti-terrorism investigations. Authorities suspected that Mohamed Achraf was planning to ram a truck loaded with 1,100 pounds of explosives into the court in downtown Madrid.
Links: Spain

A suicide bomber crossed the border from Pakistan into southern Afghanistan and blew himself up in a crowded pedestrian area, killing three civilians and wounding eight.
Links: Suicide, Afghan

2007 Mar 13

Australia and Japan signed a groundbreaking defense pact in Tokyo that the leaders of both countries stressed was not aimed at reining in China, but the road ahead for a two-way trade deal looked rougher.
Links: Australia, Japan

2007 Mar 13

Canada said it had the highest population growth rate among G-8 industrialized nations between 2001 and 2006, thanks to the arrival of 1.2 million immigrants.
Links: Canada